To All Young Men:
It has come to my attention that a lesson of vital importance which we older men learned at our father's knee may have somehow passed you by. This is a problem which much be immediately corrected; for if we fail to work together as a team, our future happiness may be in peril.
It is a known fact that men cannot wrap presents properly. Since time immemorial, men have clumsily taped together bits of mismatched paper, lumpishly mangled boxes, and left ribbons looking as though they had been molested dangling from our best efforts at festive package decoration. And this is a good thing.
Our loved ones like to get presents from us, at the holidays and on birthdays and anniversaries and other special occasions. It warms their hearts to know that we love them and are thinking of them, and that we put special effort into preparing their gift to give to them. For this reason, do not indulge in package-wrapping services. Our loved ones like to know that we cared enough to wrap the present ourselves; professionally-wrapped packages might just as well have been selected, purchased, wrapped, and presented without our direct involvement at all. It's important that you wrap each gift personally.
However, not all men have the ability to wrap a present as professionally as many women seem to be able to do. It may be genetic. This is not a bad thing, however; it's a good thing. When women see us stumble, fall, but try anyway, it warms their hearts. They laugh at our childish efforts, as one might laugh a well-meaning schoolchild who brings his teacher a paperweight made of modeling clay and resembling nothing so much as a clump of mud. They don't laugh in derision, they laugh in delight. They love that we care, and they laugh because we're so bad at it, but we earnestly try anyway.
Every misshapen box, every mangled bow, every card with words run off the side and scratched out and misspelled is special reminder to them that we, though helpless in all things gifty, care anyway and want to please our loved ones, even though it exposes our inability to use cellophane tape and write a single sentence on a card in a straight line.
Some of our young men have apparently evolved; they no longer have the defective gene that seems to have caused men to be unable to cut gift-wrapping paper in a straight line for umpteen generations. They can cut a straight line, they can write a gift card properly and neatly, they can even make a bow from scratch if need be. Young men, I urge you, stop this immediately!
For every gift you wrap perfectly, the bar is raised. Our loved ones will appreciate that you can wrap well, yes. But they will then expect that in the future; failure will be seen as laziness and not caring, rather than being charming and endearing. Our child-like fumbling will be seen as incompetence, not evidence that we care enough to expose our weaknesses.
Therefore men, we must all work together as a team. For ourselves, for our future, and yes, even for our loved ones, we must mangle those presents! Smudge those cards! Tear that gift-wrapping paper! Cut unevenly! Apply too much tape in the wrong places! Mis-match the bow and the paper! For all of our sakes, a wrapped book must look like deflated football. A rectangular box must look as though it fell from 30,000 feet. The paper edges must not match, the colors must be garish and mis-matched. Corners must not match, edges must not be even. We must emerge with paper cuts on our fingers and tape stuck to our foreheads, ink marks on our forearms, we must occasionally wrap the pen or the scissors inside the present with the gift.
If we do this, we will all continue to experience the joy of that warm light in the eyes of our loved ones when they see the crimes we have committed to wrapping paper and bows to show them our love and devotion, that yea, though we suck mightily at wrapping presents, we do it anyway because we love them that much.
Young men, take one for the team. Wreck that gift-wrap!
It has come to my attention that a lesson of vital importance which we older men learned at our father's knee may have somehow passed you by. This is a problem which much be immediately corrected; for if we fail to work together as a team, our future happiness may be in peril.
It is a known fact that men cannot wrap presents properly. Since time immemorial, men have clumsily taped together bits of mismatched paper, lumpishly mangled boxes, and left ribbons looking as though they had been molested dangling from our best efforts at festive package decoration. And this is a good thing.
Our loved ones like to get presents from us, at the holidays and on birthdays and anniversaries and other special occasions. It warms their hearts to know that we love them and are thinking of them, and that we put special effort into preparing their gift to give to them. For this reason, do not indulge in package-wrapping services. Our loved ones like to know that we cared enough to wrap the present ourselves; professionally-wrapped packages might just as well have been selected, purchased, wrapped, and presented without our direct involvement at all. It's important that you wrap each gift personally.
However, not all men have the ability to wrap a present as professionally as many women seem to be able to do. It may be genetic. This is not a bad thing, however; it's a good thing. When women see us stumble, fall, but try anyway, it warms their hearts. They laugh at our childish efforts, as one might laugh a well-meaning schoolchild who brings his teacher a paperweight made of modeling clay and resembling nothing so much as a clump of mud. They don't laugh in derision, they laugh in delight. They love that we care, and they laugh because we're so bad at it, but we earnestly try anyway.
Every misshapen box, every mangled bow, every card with words run off the side and scratched out and misspelled is special reminder to them that we, though helpless in all things gifty, care anyway and want to please our loved ones, even though it exposes our inability to use cellophane tape and write a single sentence on a card in a straight line.
Some of our young men have apparently evolved; they no longer have the defective gene that seems to have caused men to be unable to cut gift-wrapping paper in a straight line for umpteen generations. They can cut a straight line, they can write a gift card properly and neatly, they can even make a bow from scratch if need be. Young men, I urge you, stop this immediately!
For every gift you wrap perfectly, the bar is raised. Our loved ones will appreciate that you can wrap well, yes. But they will then expect that in the future; failure will be seen as laziness and not caring, rather than being charming and endearing. Our child-like fumbling will be seen as incompetence, not evidence that we care enough to expose our weaknesses.
Therefore men, we must all work together as a team. For ourselves, for our future, and yes, even for our loved ones, we must mangle those presents! Smudge those cards! Tear that gift-wrapping paper! Cut unevenly! Apply too much tape in the wrong places! Mis-match the bow and the paper! For all of our sakes, a wrapped book must look like deflated football. A rectangular box must look as though it fell from 30,000 feet. The paper edges must not match, the colors must be garish and mis-matched. Corners must not match, edges must not be even. We must emerge with paper cuts on our fingers and tape stuck to our foreheads, ink marks on our forearms, we must occasionally wrap the pen or the scissors inside the present with the gift.
If we do this, we will all continue to experience the joy of that warm light in the eyes of our loved ones when they see the crimes we have committed to wrapping paper and bows to show them our love and devotion, that yea, though we suck mightily at wrapping presents, we do it anyway because we love them that much.
Young men, take one for the team. Wreck that gift-wrap!
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